Sailing Maia home for the holidays

First thing's first: Happy Birthday to Gregor Piuk!!!!

Reinhart and I analyzed the weather and decided since no good weather window was going to present itself; we would go with the best of the worst. So we left Friday morning to ride light variable winds to NC. Oops, we left on a Friday, which breaks one of the cardinal superstitions of seamanship; good thing we aren’t superstitious! We actually ended up starting on a beautiful slow sail and decided 4 knots wasn’t really so bad and we could just take an extra 8 hours to get to Beaufort with lovely weather like this; but of course once our speed dropped to below 3 knots, and our sails slacked after each 8 knot “gust”, we started up the motor. Our newfound speed was rewarded with a large and loyal pack of dolphins that played in our bow wave and escorted us for hours right until the sun set. Who knows, they might have stayed along with us into the night. In the morning, Reinhart continued his losing battle with the sport fish of the Atlantic; he got something on the hook and battled a very heavy fish, but in the end it broke his line and took his lure causing the rod to come back and smack him in the head leaving a gash. Score: Fish - 2, Reinhart - 0. We found ourselves in the warm turquoise waters of the gulf stream for a few hours on Saturday, and thought of the beautiful waters we’ll be visiting in another 2 months. Just after we finished a chic lunch with Chef Boyardee, Reinhart won a hard fought battle and pulled in a nice mackerel. He filleted it in the cockpit and we stored it in the fridge…now I have to figure out what to do with it! Originally, I looked at this last offshore run of 2006 the same way you look at any journey home (its never as much fun to make the long trip home as it is to make the long trip “there”); however, the 35 hours held a great deal of charm and finished off our east coast cruise delightfully.

Our boat broker, John Warrington of Beaufort Yacht Sales, helped us find an economical solution for storing the boat while we go home for the holidays, and we ended up bringing Maia back to the neighborhood marina where we fitted her out when we took delivery in April 2004. So, it turns out as Reinhart and I prepare to make our trips home, Maia also gets to visit home as well. We entered the marina well after dark and slipped into our space at N34 46.046 W76 40.313

Lori and Chuck very sweetly and generously volunteered to bring us along with all of our gear home for the holidays. They’ll drive up tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) so they can get in a little boat-shopping and Beaufort-visiting before we all head inland on Monday. We’ll go home with them and stay for Thanksgiving and then come up to the triad on Friday. I’ll be starting with Syngenta on Monday after Thanksgiving and Reinhart will be heading to Austria on Tuesday to do some visiting and skiing.

We’ll continue to update the blog during our vacation from our vacation, and we may even update the site a bit. We’ll post as we make the big purchases of safety and communication gear and as we make the big decisions about where we’ll be going in 2007; but our sailing trip won’t start up again until between Christmas and New Years. Stayed tuned!